DISCUS (Ihrsos), one of the exercises in the Grecian gymnasia, being included in the wIrra0X0v, which was introduced in the ath Olympiad (p.c. 708). The profligate high-priest Jason, in the reign of Antiochus IV., surnamed Epiphanes (B.G. 175-164) introduced public games at Jerusalem, where he erected a gymnasium, or place of exer cise, and for the training up of youth in the fashions of the heathens' (2 Maccab. iv. 9). He also in duced even the priests to neglect their sacrifices, and hasten ' to be partakers of the unlawful allow ance in the place of exercise, after the game of discus called them forth' (2 Maccab. iv. 14). The discus was a circular plate of stone or metal made for throwing to a distance, as an exercise of skength and dexterity. In the British Museum there is an excellent statue of a discobolus, or thrower of the discus, representing the position in which the dis cus was thrown. This is doubtless a copy of the
famous work of Myron mentioned by Quintilian (ii. 13), and Lucian (Philopseud., IS, Didot. ed., p. 5S5). There are no less than eight copies known to exist, of which the best are the one in the Villa Massimi at Rome, and the one of the Towneley Gallery already mentioned. The Massimi statue better agrees with Lucian's description ; it is also doubtful whether the head really belongs to the one in the British Museum (Towneley Gallery, by Sir H. Ellis, K.H., vol. i., pp. 239, 24o, where it is engraved). (See Dr. Smith's Grk. and Rom. Antig. s. v. Discus and Pentathlon.) By metaphor the word discus, among other things, signified a flat round plate, whence the word dish. The word !riva,S, occurring in Matt. xiv. 8, II, and Mark vi. 25, 28, is translated in the English by charger, and in the Vulgate by discus.—F. W. M.